A complete guide to the Zendesk Shopify app

If you run an e-commerce business, you know the drill: a customer emails about their order, and your support agent has to put them on hold while they flip over to another tab, log into Shopify, and hunt down the details. It's a manual process that can lead to slower replies if you aren't using the right tools.

Connecting your help desk to your e-commerce platform isn't just a "nice-to-have" anymore; it's a must. The official Zendesk Shopify app is built to solve this exact problem by pulling all that important order info right into the place where your team works.

In this guide, we'll walk you through everything you need to know about the integration. We'll cover what it does well, how to get it running, what it costs, and how to get the most out of it. We'll also talk about when it makes sense to add AI into the mix to go from just viewing customer data to actually automating responses.

What is the official Zendesk Shopify app?

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of the app, let's do a quick intro for the two platforms it connects.

• Zendesk is an industry-leading customer service platform that brings all your customer conversations (from email, chat, social media, you name it) into one powerful ticketing system. The whole point is to help your support team track and solve customer problems while streamlining their workflows.

• Shopify is the powerhouse e-commerce platform that lets you build your online store, manage inventory, take payments, and ship products to your customers.

The Zendesk Shopify app is a free integration you can grab from the Zendesk Marketplace that acts as a bridge between these two worlds. Its main job is to pull customer and order information from your Shopify store and show it in a neat little sidebar right inside the Zendesk ticket view.

So, when an agent opens a ticket, they can instantly see the customer’s order history, shipping status, and other key details. No more switching tabs. No more asking the customer, "Can you give me your order number again?" The idea is to cut down on that context-switching and help agents answer e-commerce questions a whole lot faster.

Key features and use cases of the Zendesk Shopify app

The native integration comes with a few core features that are genuinely helpful for any support agent dealing with online orders.

See customer and order data in one place

This is the app's biggest selling point. It shows a customer's recent Shopify orders right next to their support ticket. Agents can see a quick summary or click to expand and get more details, like:

• When the order was placed and how much it cost

• The payment and fulfillment status

• The shipping address and tracking numbers

• A list of the exact products in the order

This is a lifesaver for all those "Where is my order?" (WISMO) questions. The agent has the tracking link right there, ready to go.

Handle refunds and cancellations

For orders that haven't been fulfilled yet, the app lets agents with the right permissions process refunds and cancellations directly from the sidebar. This saves a ton of time, as they don't have to pop over to the Shopify admin panel to do it. After an action is taken, the app automatically adds a tag like "shopify_refund" or "shopify_cancelled" to the ticket, which helps with tracking.

Add a chat widget to your storefront

The integration also helps you add the Zendesk Web Widget to your Shopify store. This lets customers start a live chat or look for help articles while they're shopping. It's a great way to answer questions on the spot, which can help lower cart abandonment and maybe even boost sales.

It’s worth pointing out, though, that these features are all designed to help a human agent work more efficiently. The app surfaces information and offers handy shortcuts to empower your team. For those looking for full automation, Zendesk offers an extensive ecosystem of tools to resolve tickets without manual intervention.

How to set up and configure the Zendesk Shopify app

The good news is that you don't need a developer to get the Zendesk Shopify app working. It's a pretty straightforward process.

A quick guide to installation

You'll need to install the app from both app stores to get them talking to each other. Here's a quick rundown of the steps, based on Zendesk's own documentation:

1. First, install the Zendesk app from the Shopify App Store.

2. Next, you'll enter your Zendesk subdomain to start the connection.

3. Give the connection a name in Zendesk's Admin Center to make it official.

4. Finally, tweak the app's settings in Zendesk to turn on the sidebar and enable features like refunds.

If your business runs multiple Shopify stores, you can connect all of them to a single Zendesk account, which is great for managing different brands.

Considerations for scaling

While the app is definitely useful, there are a few things to keep in mind as your ticket volume starts to climb.

• Focused on agent productivity. The app is designed to help agents find info faster, providing a great experience for the human-led side of your support. To manage high volumes, many teams pair the app with AI tools.

• Multi-store management. When connecting several Shopify stores, it's best to ensure your Zendesk environment is optimized for high data throughput to keep things running smoothly.

• Streamlined functionality. The app is great for looking up orders and processing refunds, keeping things simple and intuitive for the average support agent.

Moving to true automation

The native integration is a fantastic starting point. But the biggest wins in support efficiency come from automation. Think about it: instead of just showing an agent the order status, what if an AI could read the ticket, find the order in Shopify, and send a personalized, accurate response back to the customer instantly?

That’s where a tool like eesel AI comes into the picture. It works alongside your Zendesk and Shopify accounts and uses that information to power an AI agent that can resolve tickets on its own. Because eesel AI can be trained on your past support conversations, it picks up your brand's voice and understands your common issues from the get-go. You can set up custom actions, like looking up an order status or checking a return policy, and get it running in minutes.

Zendesk Shopify integration pricing

Of course, we have to talk about cost. While the official Zendesk Shopify app is free to install, you'll need to be on a paid Zendesk plan to use it.

Zendesk Suite pricing plans

Zendesk offers tiered plans to match different team sizes and needs, with pricing reflecting the professional-grade features included. The integration works with all of their Zendesk Suite plans.

Plan	Price (Billed Annually)	Price (Billed Monthly)	Key Features for E-commerce
Suite Team	$55 / agent / month	$69 / agent / month	Ticketing, messaging, social, 1 help center, basic AI
Suite Professional	$115 / agent / month	$149 / agent / month	Up to 5 help centers, customizable reporting, HIPAA compliance
Suite Enterprise	$169 / agent / month	$219 / agent / month	Custom roles, sandbox environment, advanced workflows

Heads up: Pricing is based on info from Zendesk's pricing page and could change.

The investment in Zendesk ensures you have a reliable, enterprise-grade platform that can scale with your business. As your team grows, you can also look into automation to help manage costs while maintaining a high level of service.

That's a complementary approach compared to platforms like eesel AI, which uses an interaction-based pricing model. You aren't charged per user, so you're not penalized for growing your team. You get a predictable monthly cost that covers a certain number of AI resolutions, which makes budgeting a lot simpler when paired with your Zendesk setup.

When to look beyond the basic Zendesk Shopify app

For smaller e-commerce businesses that are just getting their feet wet, the official Zendesk Shopify app is a fantastic tool. It puts customer data where it needs to be, saves your agents from flipping between tabs, and makes the whole support process feel a little smoother. It’s a great foundation to build on.

But as your business grows, you'll probably be ready to add more layers of efficiency. The app helps your team work faster, and automation can help reduce their manual workload. If your agents are spending a good chunk of their day answering the same questions about order status, returns, and shipping, you can enhance what the native integration does for you by adding AI.

When you hit that point, the next logical move is to bring in an AI and automation platform. A tool like the eesel AI Agent can plug into your existing Zendesk and Shopify setup and start automatically resolving common, repetitive tickets. With a setup you can manage yourself and tools that let you see exactly how the AI will respond, you can confidently automate your support, free up your agents for the tough problems, and give your customers instant answers, 24/7.